For the past several million years, humanity and its ancestors have spent the
entire time on or near the planet Earth. (As best as we can tell from
fossil records we've found, that is: There have never really been any
compelling pieces of evidence discovered to dispute the theory. This
discussion, however, is another story...) Within the last couple of
centuries, we've discovered how to leave the ground and travel through the
air - first with balloons made lighter than air, then with progressively
heavier means of providing lift, until today we use machines so weighty that
they would fall like a rock to the ground if they don't keep going. Over the
course of the last few decades, we have not only left the ground, but we have
now left the atmosphere, and even traveled to another planet - the Moon that
forms the other part of our local environment in space. Our history, even
before we started recording it, has been exclusively one of humans that live
on the Earth: Even the astronauts and cosmonauts who are presently living in
the space stations orbiting the planet come back after a "short" time to spend
the rest of their lives on the ground.

Now humanity is at a juncture where we are rapidly finding that our planet is
not big enough to support all of us and our dreams: Too many people want too
much of the pie for everyone to get what they want, which means some
(many) go without. When this happens on a civilizational level, nations
feel deprived, which has often led to war. Our population has been exploding,
and to date, our technologies of production have managed to keep sufficiently
ahead of the demands placed upon them to avert a catastrophic failure. We've
been lucky, so far, because the resources available have not run out, and the
machines keep going to keep the grumbling to a bearable level.

What will happen when our resources start falling short of the required mark,
on a global level? Take your pick - food, oil, water, unpolluted air, land to
build housing developments or roads - any of these, or a host of others, will
soon get to the point where we don't have enough to go around, and no way to
come up with more - unless we look beyond the globe that has been our home
since the beginning of human time.

Back: ARE YOU COMING?

There are more resources available within our Solar System than most people
could readily imagine. To the best of our knowledge, they are there for the
taking - if we can reach them - because there are no other intelligent
life-forms to contest our claim within the sphere of our Sun's useful energy
field.

"If we can reach them" - That's the key phrase. In order to tap the abundant
reserves found in our planetary plane - even to utilize what is as close as
the Moon - we have to turn to space, and space travel. The job could
theoretically be done by robotic systems, if we want to invest more of our
precious time and resources into developing the necessary technologies needed
for autonomous exploration and extraction of the essential elements. Doing
so, however, would not provide a vent for the bursting population to grow into
new homes. It would also severely limit the benefits from innovation that
always happen when we find ourselves living on a frontier with help an
unbending distance of time away, and a crisis that has to be solved NOW
if we are to survive. Besides, how could we teach a robot to write poetry
about the view from inside Saturn's rings or tell the tale of an adventurous
rescue from the storms of Jupiter's winds? Such a robot will probably be
built some time in the future, if we live that long, but I have to wonder if
we would be creating our replacements when we did that...

The best answer, then, is that HUMANS should go to space, to explore
the universe, develop its resources, and bring back the goods to the waiting
population that stays behind. We can get by with limited sojurns across the
void for a while, but eventually there will be people who go with no plans to
ever come back. That will be a major step in their lives, one that will not
only profoundly affect their own future, but that of everyone living at the
time.

I will be one of those people who journeys off our native planet with the
intent of becoming a permanent resident somewhere else in space. Who want's
to go with me? Send me some
email if you're interested, because I'd like to know.

I was wearing this shirt one Sunday afternoon, sitting in a local restaurant,
when I heard a man's voice behind me. From the sound of his voice, I guess he
must have said it a couple of times before I heard "She said, 'No, I'm not'"
taunting me in a friendly sort of way. When I turned to see who was making
the remark (a middle-aged husband/father, there with his wife and a couple of
kids), he got to see what the rest of the shirt said - and I got to tell more
of the story than some people see when I pass by them on the street. My food
came, though, so I had other things to do...

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